Polish Teachers End Strike to Allow Exams but Tell Government It’s Not Over

WARSAW — When Poland’s teachers went on strike three weeks ago, bringing the nation’s school system to a grinding halt and forcing parents to scramble to find child care, the response from the government was not exactly sympathetic.

The unions were compared to Nazis, teachers were told they could simply have more children and earn government benefits if they wanted more money, and they were lectured about how they should not be teaching for money anyway.

At the same time, the government announced a raft of new spending on social welfare programs and other measures, including a generous subsidy for farmers. But while the teachers agreed to suspend the strike on Saturday, allowing students to take final exams that determine where they go to university, the matter remains unresolved, and the teachers promised to pick up the cause in September.

“In the past two weeks, money has been found for everyone, not only for humans, but there is no money for the teachers,” Slawomir Broniarz, the head of the Association of Polish Teachers, said in an interview this month with the private television station TVN24. “It’s a pity that we lost to cows and pigs.”

For the governing populist Law and Justice Party, the strike was both an embarrassment and a possible sign of weakness ahead of parliamentary elections in October. And the harsh language used by all parties reflects the deeper divisions that have grown steadily more entrenched since Law and Justice came to power in 2015.

The teachers, whose net monthly income ranges from $570 to $1,030 on average, are demanding a raise of 1,000 zloty per month, or about $260. Their protests have drawn thousands of people to the streets. On Wednesday, hundreds of teachers disrupted traffic in central Warsaw, carrying banners with black or orange exclamation points to symbolize their frustration.

One of the more popular slogans, appearing on banners in cities across the country, reads, “Let the closed schools open people’s eyes.”

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The teachers, whose monthly net income is $570 to $1,030 on average, are demanding a raise of $260.CreditJanek Skarzynski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

When Dawid Podsiadlo, one of the most popular and critically acclaimed young artists in the country, wrote this month on Facebook about his teachers, the post quickly went viral.

“I am 25 years old,” he wrote. “I went to nursery, kindergarten, then I finished primary school, junior high school and, ultimately, high school. Simple mathematics shows that for more than half of my life, for five days a week, I spent most of the day under the care of teachers. It is thanks to the people I met at school that my life’s path has gone the way it has.”

But leading figures in the government have been mostly dismissive of the teachers’ plight, reflecting the fact that they are generally not considered a part of the party’s constituency.

Krzysztof Szczerski, President Andrzej Duda’s chief of staff, appeared to suggest during a recent interview with state-owned radio that teachers should have more children if they want to earn more money.

“Teachers are not obliged to live in celibacy,” Mr. Szczerski said. “Those transfers that are made today, for example for Polish families, including 500 Plus, they also apply to teachers,” he said, referring to a government benefits program.

Patryk Jaki, a deputy justice minister who lost his bid to become Warsaw’s mayor, compared the teachers’ methods to those of the armed forces of Nazi Germany when he said on Tuesday that the tactics of the strikers in the city of Sosnowiec — where a line of striking teachers awaited those who were not stopping work — were “just like the Wehrmacht.”

“I do not wish them to ever teach my child or any other children,” he said. “This is humiliating people, ostracism, which personally is unacceptable to me. People who have made this column should never be teachers.”

“We are dealing with a direct attack on the family and children — the sexualization of children, that entire L.G.B.T. movement, gender,” Mr. Kaczynski said on Wednesday in Wloclawek, a town in central Poland, during a conference called Being Polish: Pride and Duty.

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Teachers in an empty classroom at a primary school in Gdansk during the strike. On Thursday, teachers suspended the strike, saying that they did not want to harm students ahead of exams.CreditAdam Warzawa/EPA, via Shutterstock

The party’s popularity, however, rests as much on ideology as it does on generous social welfare policies. In 2015, it campaigned on the promise to give every mother a monthly stipend of 500 zloty, around $130, for every child she has after the first.

Poland has been one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe for decades and continues to chug along, with the gross domestic product growing about 5 percent in 2018, allowing the government to spend liberally.

In the weeks before elections for the European Parliament, scheduled for the end of May, a prelude to the Polish elections later this year, the government offered tax cuts and cash subsidies for families, retired Polish residents and farmers. A total of 10.7 billion zloty, or $2.8 billion, will be paid on a one-off basis in May to almost 10 million retirees.

The government has also approved a plan to expand its flagship child-benefit program. Over all, the new benefits and tax breaks are estimated to cost $12 billion to $16 billion over the next two years. And the government has used its control over the state news media to tout those measures as a sign of the country’s success.

“I remember the Communist propaganda, and this is worse,” said Leszek Balcerowicz, an economist who played a major role in Poland’s transition to capitalism from socialism and who now runs FOR, a foundation focused on civic development. “Every day, they push this message of how successful the government has been, how well the economy is doing. And then you have this huge increase in social spending.”

For teachers, he said, “you can imagine the indignation.”

The government has offered a smaller raise than teachers demanded, peeling off some of those on strike. It was also preparing to pass emergency legislation that would have allowed students to take their exams even without the teachers’ participation.

On Thursday, the teachers finally relented, saying that they did not want to harm students.

Mr. Broniarz, the head of the teachers’ union that led the strike, said the government had until September to “answer the needs of over half a million teachers and hundreds of thousands of parents and students.”

“We’re not giving up,” he said at a news conference on Thursday. “We’re not giving up the fight for a decent Polish school.”